President Barack Obama stepped into an oil-slicked Keystone Pipeline mess on his way out of town Friday, contradicting the findings of his own State and Energy Departments.

The pipeline, a 1,179-mile long planned conduit stretching from Albert, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, has generated environmental controversy that the administration pledged to weigh against the project's economic impact.

Obama claimed Friday during a press conference before he left for an extended vacation that America would hardly notice the $8 billion enterprise's impact on their pocketbooks.

'At issue in Keystone is not American oil. It is Canadian oil that is drawn out of tar sands in Canada,' he told a packed press briefing room.

Obama made no mention of oil from Montana and North Dakota that will be incorporated into the three-foot-wide pipeline's load if the project gets a green-light from Congress in the new year.

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NOT IMPRESSED: Obama said the Keystone pipeline will bring little benefit to Americans and won't include oil from American wells.

The three-foot-wide pipeline, pieces of which are seen here, will wend its way through 1,179 miles of North America on a path from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf coast of Texas

North Dakota Senator John Hoeven (left) disputes Obama's contentions about the pipeline, and has helped recruit key Democrats including West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to is side with arguments about energy independence

'It would save Canadian oil companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pipe it all the way through the United States down to the Gulf,' he said, casting the enterprise as a sop to businesses north of the border.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this week that a Keystone approval bill will be his chamber's first agenda item in January.

But the president hedged his bets on what he would do if a united, Republican-led Congress dropped that legislation on his desk.

'I'll see what they do,' he said. 'We'll take that up in the New Year.'

A reporter asked Obama if he had been short-selling the economic benefits of the pipeline, and he shot back that 'I don’t think I’ve minimized the benefits, I think I’ve described the benefits.'

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'There is very little impact, nominal impact, on U.S. gas prices – what the average American consumer cares about – by having this pipeline come through,' he claimed.

'There’s a global oil market. It's very good for Canadian oil companies and it's good for the Canadian oil industry, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to U.S. consumers.'

'It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to U.S. consumers,' Obama said, putting an exclamation point on his argument.

Republican North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven fired back, telling DailyMail.com that the president's judgment was 'just not accurate.'

'The president said that the pipeline would move only Canadian oil and that it would all be exported. He’s wrong on both counts,' said Hoeven.

'The Keystone XL pipeline will also carry light sweet crude from North Dakota and Montana, and the president's own Department of Energy produced a report that said the oil would be used in the United States.'

That report, a June 2011 memorandum, came from the desk of Carmine DiFiglio, the department's deputy assistant secretary for policy analysis.

NORTH DAKOTA CRUDE: Rancher Bob Banderet stands in front of the Keystone pumping station that will move oil from the state into the main pipeline – something Obama said Friday won't happen

Hoeven also had an answer for Obama's insistence on Friday that the project's chief negative remains the threat of an outsize environmental footprint that could drive new levels of climate change.

'I want to make sure that if, in fact, this project goes forward, that it's not adding to the problem,' Obama said.

'If we've got more flooding, more wildfires, more drought, there are direct economic impacts on that.'

But Hoeven said Obama forgot to count the environmental impact of the Alberta tar sands oil's current mode of transportation.

TransCanada, the company that has been angling to build the pipeline since 2008, is shipping the oil 'through rail or trucks,' the president said during his press conference.

The North Dakota senator suggested that he should read the latest environmental impact report from his own State Department.

That report, he said, concluded that 'it would take 1,400 tanker rail cars every day to ship the same amount of oil as the pipeline.'

'Ironically, not building the pipeline will result in more emissions from trucks, trains and oil tankers than would ever be produced by the Keystone XL pipeline.'

NOT QUITE: Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, was one vote shy of passing a Keystone pipeline approval bill in November, and her failure helped a Republican snatch her seat away in an election runoff

It's unclear whether Obama is laying the groundwork for a veto. But ultimately the Nebraska Supreme Court could have as much to say about the outcome as the White House.

Governor Dave Heineman has approved the pipeline's route through his state, but a group of landowners challenged that decision.

If they prevail, TransCanada will have to start over with Nebraska's Public Services Commission and find a new path through the Cornhusker State. That could take as long as a year.

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu tried to make approving Keystone the cornerstone of her failed bid to keep her seat in November and December. She was among the president's allies who have deserted him on the issue.

Oil refineries dot Landrieu's state like chicken pox and provide Louisianans with a recession-proof economic baseline.

She tried in mid-November to marshal the 60 votes in the Senate required to break a logjam and approve the pipeline, but she fell short by just one.

The House of Representatives passed its version of the bill by a wide margin.

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Barack Obama says in year-end presser that Keystone pipeline will carry only Canadian oil